


cut it out (it's for you)

by Crazyamoeba



Series: shadows hanging on dust [1]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Blood and Injury, Cults, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Stockholm Syndrome, Unhealthy Relationships, dark staci, murder presents, off-screen violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 11:04:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16117091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazyamoeba/pseuds/Crazyamoeba
Summary: Staci comes Home, and he knows that it's rude to show up empty-handed.





	cut it out (it's for you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [devils_trap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/devils_trap/gifts).



> This was originally what I wanted to do with the other part in this series, A synonym for this, but can be read as a standalone.

   
The muffled, chattering darkness that surrounds Staci at first feels no different to the wet, clanking womb where Jacob had left him.

  
Walked away from Staci’s howling, screaming through torn strips of muscle and aching bone. Begging for anything but death and anything but this.

  
Anything but death because he’s a coward, and he doesn’t want to leave.  
  


Anything but this because he’s a _monster_ and a coward who doesn’t want _him_ to leave.

_  
Abandoned. Traitor._

   
Those two certainties, every day, chasing each other’s tails in an endless loop like a ragnarok that will never come. An eternity of the chase, the hunt. The pursuit that always draws blood and rips flesh from bone, but which never ends in a feast. Never sates the hunger seeping through his body to settle, heavy and ruined in the honeycomb of his bones. All bitten through and hollowed out by Jacob Seed, breathed new and cloyingly sweet, choking life from between smirking lips and flashes of bone-white, glinting teeth.

 

Eli tries his best to put gentle lips to the wound, suck out the poison.

 

Taking Staci from Rook and stripping him slowly, gently in the privacy of the wetroom. Soothing Staci’s curled lips and fingers, talking softly and lowly about nonsense things that no longer mean anything because they are not Red, keeping up the calm stream of chatter as he deflects flailing hands and snapping teeth.

 

Bathing Staci’s crooked and bruised body. Sluicing warm water over the welts and cuts and the whole time, the only thing that Staci can think is that Eli’s hands are smoother than Jacob’s.

 

Missing the roughness of badly-healed burns that felt good when they stroked soap and water into the worst of his wounds. Humming low and just as rough as the skin of his hands when Staci flinched. No words other than simple directions to lift this arm or that leg as he diligently cared for the wounds that his Chosen, his training, his Word, had inflicted.

 

All Him, Him, Him, and never more Him than when he was showing Staci how gentle and warm Acceptance and Belonging felt against the skin, against knotted and greasy hair that slowly eased and gave up its painful, pulling tangles under knowing, soothing fingers.

 

“Jacob did this too.”

 

He doesn’t know what the words are supposed to accomplish, but he feels Eli’s too-light touch judder and fall heavy against his wounds, like downed birds, broken wings fluttering helplessly against the pull of the earth.

 

“I suppose even monsters know what they’re missing.”

 

Trying to keep the words buoyed up above the rising water, but Staci can hear it bubble and churn in his lungs, can hear Eli try not to spit the little rough pebbles of surprise and disgust and _why why why_ confusion into Staci’s wounds.

 

As if he might get offended, as if Eli has just insulted a man who would have been a perfect physical fit to the faceless, mystery man that Staci’s childhood self had hoped might sway his mother to forgiving Staci for his sins.

 

The type of man she might look at and see something human and warm, something to offset and chip away at the goddlessness of Them.

 

He laughs, a small, damp popping sound like metal crunching into breastbone, hissing and shoving Eli’s quieting hand away.

 

“I’m sorry, Deputy Pratt.” Words soft but not rasping or low enough and wrong, wrong, wrong. He whines and flinches from Eli’s kind and heavy hand, just because he can. The pressure on his wound hurts, but Staci has borne far more under Jacob and managed to keep the weakness behind his ribs.

 

Perhaps it’s just petty punishment for Eli having brown hair and dull eyes, and hands that promise not to hurt him. Staci’s eyes water as he looks up at the entirely too well-fitting guilt and concern that creases across Eli’s face.

 

The hand is immediately withdrawn, and Staci wants to chase it. To bring it back to his body and beg forgiveness.

 

 _You are treacherous, you are ungrateful, you are_ weak

 

“I’m sorry,” the words fracture into hundreds of tiny, ringing shards against the wet room walls, Staci’s damp, heaving sounds failing to cushion their fall.

 

Between stolen, borrowed breaths that yearn to take flight to somewhere they belong, he and Eli listen to the tinkling sound of those words shattering against the ground. Flying into their unprotected flesh, cutting whatever they can reach and marking them forever.

 

Not even willing to allow them this small moment to pretend that everything has healed well. Fresh, pink, healthy skin over straight, clean lines of bone. Rather than the jagged purple wounds sealing themselves over splintered and stained bone that has healed thicker, stronger, deformed and _better._

 

Staci’s face is urged closer to a steady heart behind a strong, thick chest, and before he closes his eyes and allows himself to think about how this could have gone, he sees that Eli has missed a button on his shirt.

 

The whole thing is out of line, twisted up and wrong. He can’t see the outlier button, wonders if it’s broken its thread and tumbled to the floor somewhere.   


“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, please forgive me.” Leaning heavily into the arms that are opened readily and without condition or trial or proof of worthiness.

 

It’s good, even as his split cheek weeps sluggishly from the cold and grating pressure of one of Eli’s zips.

 

But it doesn’t make the ragged parts of him lie flat, and it doesn’t reach the decaying centre of his bones.   
  
Doesn’t stop him from raising his voice like a wounded, dying, juvenile thing. Calling and calling, in hopes that those that smell right will come to it, retrieve it.

 

Or at the very least that something would stop and pause to acknowledge its passing.

 

“I’m sorry, god, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me here.”

  


*******

 

Staci doesn’t know how many days it’s been since the first broadcast, because he doesn’t count those days. They don’t even serve to mark time for him. He can’t possibly count out the seconds and minutes and hours of his life, because they can’t hold anything of meaning for him.

 

Can’t see the world in a grain of sand, or eternity in an hour.

 

There are two halves of his life, and one is already over.

 

There is only the other half left to live, and it is speaking to him from the blue, unsteady light that strobes from the old television, bathing Staci with Red.

 

Jacob’s voice, crackling through the Wolf’s Den like smoke, hooking into some soft and raised wound inside of Staci, urging him up from his place on the floor - cleaning their rifles, and Staci tries to keep his face set and flat and smooth because _they trust him, they trust him, they trust him_

 

 _-_ or hope that perhaps if he has any desire to bring it all crashing down, it will be a purely solitary action rather than one of mutually assured destruction.

 

Letting the weapon clack to the floor like toy soldiers and their plastic guns.

 

Grunting and snarling at the boy-man who tries to modulate his voice to something urging _calm, stop,_ rather than the fear and weak bladder that Staci can practically _smell_ on him.

 

Weak, unworthy. Not worth his time, not yet.

 

Pushing him aside with itching fingers even as he remembers his light, breezy laugh breathing fresh air and youthful, blissful ignorance into his wounds. Remembers the kid chortling and grinning to him about the box of old records at his feet, never concerned by Staci’s lack of contribution to the conversation, never concerned by the marks of ownership and Other inflicted and invited onto Staci, even the ones that he couldn’t hear or see or smell, but which caused Eli to stare when he thought Staci was asleep, and Tammy to hiss and spit and avoid him as much as possible.

 

Remembers the kid’s nonsense settling on his skin like misty rain, drifting into his ear like music after ringing silence and off-pitch assurances, and still pushes him aside because the only music that matters to Staci is the not-there strains of a promise, of understanding and belonging and _only you, only you, only you._

 

Folding his legs under him on the floor in front of the boxy television perched on the table of the ‘armory.’ Kneeling at the lightning-box altar, practically pressing his face against the fuzzy, electrical storm excitement of the static. Would close his eyes and let it touch every part of him that he could, except for the fact that he doesn’t want to miss Him.

 

Jacob, sitting back in a chair that looks like it shouldn’t even be able to hold the weight of someone so strong, so capable and laden with functional, working muscle.

 

Legs slightly parted, and Staci’s own slide open by just half an inch, body unaware of itself but hyper aware and so, so open to the man not even sitting before him, half-smile tucking into the creases and scars already lining his face. Small and barely there, like a secret, hidden for Staci and Only for Staci to find.

 

“I don’t need to know where you are, Peaches. Don’t need to know who you’re with, though I got my suspicions.”

 

A deep chuckle curling across his lips, softening them until he again might just resemble the man Staci’s mother might not have hated. Staci’s lips ache where they lift and bare his teeth in return.

 

“Don’t need to know any of that, because you’re gonna come to me, aren’t you Staci? Gonna come to me, because eventually you’re gonna want to come Home.”

 

That word, swept on an echo that shudders through the thick cement floor and soaks into his knees like pooling, congealing blood. One more thing to seep through his thickening skin and brittle bones, filling them almost full. Almost ready.

 

“Gonna come home where your Purpose lives. Only place you fit now, huh Peaches? Only place torn up enough to fit all those jagged edges.”

 

Inching his face closer to the screen, breath fogging the glass and fingers twitching in his lap.  
  
“Whenever you’re ready. Y’won’t be punished.”

 

The eyes and sharp-edged dog tags and sheathed knife and Red Red Red on the screen flickers, on and off and on again like flashing porch lights, and Staci spits whatever moisture that isn’t pooling in his eyes at the man who unplugs the TV.

 

Kicks out at his legs, snaps them out from under him and throws his weight on top of the writhing mass.

Howls when he feels barely-familiar arms band around his waist, lift him from the soft midsection beneath him and try to growl soothing epithets in his ear while placating the man he had toppled.

 

Staci can smell the blood on Eli’s feet, lacerated from the tightrope he walks, and Staci feels the echo of what should be shame tripping along his insides, looking for a place to fit. Feels all his new, freshly-reshaped spaces fail to find a home for it. Listens to it clank uselessly around as Eli bodily hauls him away, sharply taps his thigh to try to make him listen to a whole new set of commandments.

 

“No more violence, Staci. Do you understand? There’s no need for it here. We know who you are.”

 

Static, static, so much wordless noise. He squints, looks at Eli through narrowed eyes and tries to read his lips, might take his meaning if he can see it fall from his tongue.

 

Sees sadness, but doesn’t know what that has to do with anything. Regrets it, because despite everything, Eli has been Good and Kind. Even if Staci can’t understand what he says most days.

 

“Staci.” Face creased and lined and Staci wants to reach out, smooth them away. Change them into something better, stronger.

 

His Gift, the only one that he has to give.

 

“You’re worthy. You’re strong. We know that. You’ve...you’ve done enough. Don’t need to do any more, don’t need to prove anything else. No more, okay?”

 

Staci nods, because these words find homes in his twisted, beautiful spaces. He can hear them, and See them.

 

“Okay. I - I know that. I know.”

 

Tries out a smile, hopes that it smooths over the uneven truth poking like broken pieces of antler tines through his skin.

 

Eli is Good and Kind and everything that Staci’s mother might still not despise if everything were to stop and he were to bring him home to her tomorrow.

 

But he was never the one that Staci would have to prove himself to.

  


****

  


Eli and the kid and the few others that occupy the Wolf’s Den that don’t want to put him down like a wounded dog all try to serve him with gentle distractions from the hissing static of the radio, Jacob having withdrawn his image from the television after that first time.

 

As if he knows what happened, how far that single glimpse had pushed Staci. Determined that it had done its job, pushed just enough memory back into Staci’s bloodstream to have him itching and sweating and chomping at the bit to get _more, more, more,_ because what Jacob knew above all else was that Staci Pratt had been a greedy, jealous child, and he had never grown out of it.

 

They try to make sure that only one of them has a radio on their person whenever they sit with Staci - only one radio to curse at and fumble with whenever that low, rasping laugh pours out of it and yanks Staci’s spine straight, but Staci knows this is a mistake.

 

He mostly allows them to do it, if there are two or more of them with him. No point in starting that fight.

 

 _You don’t_ **_want_ ** _to start that fight!_

 

The voice is weak and warbling and Staci doesn’t give it a lot of time because of the inherent lack of worthiness that trembles there, but he can’t pretend that he doesn’t hear it.

 

_These are your friends, your fucking saviours! You don’t want to fight them, don’t want to hurt them!_

 

But what that whining, supplicant voice doesn’t realise is that it’s not a matter of _want._ They’re beyond that now.

This is survival, this is Strength and Worthiness, and those two judges are blind to niceties and friendship and -

 

“They gonna be proud of you, Staci?”

 

He cradles the radio to his ear, hunched over on his knees, between his bunk and the wall. Belly curved over it, ear pressed tightly, greedily to it. Can’t let any of that sound escape. Can’t let them have it.

 

“What do you think, Peaches? They gonna be proud of your strength, proud of your ability to do what needs to be done?”

 

The memory of Eli’s palm stinging against his thigh seems to bloom fresh against his skin. As if he were a dog, rabid and wild an incapable of understanding anything except the physical.

 

Of Tammy’s curled lip and ruthlessly strangled sympathy when she looks at him. Like the dog who bites a child and must be taken by the collar, wrangled to the yard and shot because chances cannot be taken.

 

His father’s face flashes briefly before his eyes, but he smothers that in a fashion not so different from Tammy.

 

In another life, perhaps he could have taken her to Jacob as anything other than a Gift.

 

When hands close around his shoulders, it feels like water, cool and soft and barely feeling like drowning at all, gently trickling down from the crown of his head all the way over his spine, radiating out through all of his limbs, saturating flesh and muscle in gentle numbness.

 

He doesn’t know who has hold of him, only that it is not Eli, or Tammy, or the kid, and beyond that, the world outside that Red voice is closed and dark to him.

 

He hears the sound he makes through that pretty fog, ears partially stopped to it, heart closed to it.

 

Hears the sound the other man makes distantly, through the swelling of warmth and pride, through the bubbling of metallic tanginess in his mouth as he sinks his teeth through the skin and bone of one of those errant fingers that should never have touched him.

 

Spits the finger to the ground and grunts, panting and baring his teeth through the effort when the air is forced from his body as it hits the ground. Snaps his bloodied, clotting teeth at Eli’s restraining hands before one of them forces his head gently to the floor. Feels the weight of Eli’s body on his, of the kid’s hands on his flailing legs, the damp cement smoothing over his cheek like comfort and humiliation both.

 

Hears Jacob’s voice, rolling from the radio that nobody bothered to turn off in the midst of all the panicked, primate sounds, rumbling and amused and burning with a truth that Staci wants to wriggle closer to.

 

“They gonna look at all that you’ve Become and see Strength, triumph? Or just another animal, frothing at the mouth and needing to be put down?”

 

Staci bites into his tongue, allows his own blood to mingle with the _other, unworthy_ still staining the inside of his mouth. Tenses his whole body like simply dragging it towards the sound of that voice might take him somewhere else, somewhere far from here where blood on his teeth and staining the ground won’t be cause for so much painful, screeching noise assaulting his ears.

 

“I dunno, Peaches. Time will tell, I suppose. But I’ll always be right here. You know where Home is, don’t you?”

  


****

  


He had forgotten that the air in Jacob’s quarters is warm. Warmer even than the Wolf’s Den.

 

Even from his position crouched beneath Jacob’s desk, through the distant cries of alarm and clicking of weapons being loaded, the warmth reaches him and makes his eyelids heavy, despite the trembling dancing through his limbs and making the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up like sharp, dripping spines.

 

When he hears the doors open, any heaviness drains violently from his skin, washed away by the swift heat of electricity crackling over and through every cell in his body.

 

The sound of his pulse thundering loud and stupidly proud in his ears, his whole body shaking so hard that he’s surprised he isn’t making the very foundations of the veterans hospital quiver beneath him.

 

The sound of well-worn soles - combat boots, efficient and well-made and not click-clacking and useless like the shoes Staci had always been forced to wear with his dress uniform - ripples across the bare floor of Jacob’s sanctuary, reaches Staci and pools around him, making him quiver like it’s soaked him from head to toe.

 

“I know it can be a long road home sometimes. Make you tired.”

 

Those boots suddenly standing front and centre in the little space between the legs of Jacob’s desk. The soft rustling of clothing as legs slowly, slowly bend, and Jacob’s face comes into view.

 

His arm is braced against the top of the desk, and he rests his forehead casually against the branch his bicep makes. Quirks the corner of his lips gently at Staci.  


“You tired, Peaches?”

 

Reaching a hand into the dark space made damp with Staci’s metallic, thrilled panting. Large, warm fingers wrapping securely around the back of his neck, pulling firmly, dragging Staci’s stiff, curled-up form forward just enough to be able to hook the rest of his arm around his back.

 

Staci’s jaws aching, vibration running through his itching, searching teeth as they snap down on the air where Jacob’s arm had been. Thinks he might even have trimmed some of the soft covering of red hair running up and down the uneven, blotchy arms.

 

Lunges again once Jacob’s right arm has more thoroughly curled around him, eyes sparking and stomach heating with metallic tang of victory as his incisors sink into firm, solid muscle.

 

Distantly hears Jacob chuckle and hiss as he clamps down harder.

 

“That a ‘yes’? You a little whacked, Staci? Come out here, c’mon, lemme see those little needle teeth, huh? Been a long time.”

 

Yanking Staci the rest of the way out from under the desk, large, gleaming white teeth bared as he chuckles and even tugs at his own arm where it’s sandwiched between Staci’s teeth, like any ordinary man might play tug of war with a dog and a rope.

 

Laughter low and growling, pulling Staci to him as he insistently clamps his teeth down, which doesn’t seem to discourage Jacob at all, batting Staci’s flailing, rigid limbs away from where they’re taking vicious swipes at him.

 

Taking everything Staci has to give and either absorbing it, drawing the impact into himself and dispersing it into his bulk, his bloodstream, his very bones, or meeting every blow and redirecting them to empty space as Staci growls and hisses.

 

“I’ll bet you are. Tired out from killing all my men, huh Peaches?” No sense of exhaustion or tiring even though Staci’s giving it his all, curling his fingers into claws and trying to hook them into whatever is warm and fleshy and vulnerable, teeth snapping even as Jacob manages to reign in his arms, twisting them into a painless but infuriatingly secure hold, taking control of Staci’s body as he lowers it back down onto the floor.

 

“They were weak,” spitting between teeth that must surely have little splinters chipped off them with the force of Staci’s fury, because it’s _true._

 

“Fucking _unworthy,_ Jacob _._ Did you a favour. Culled the herd. They would only have brought us all down with them if they had been allowed to live.”

 

Rapid-fire with the fever-heat of those with the zeal of Sight, and Jacob’s chest shudders, wet with pride as he releases Staci’s hands, allowing those sharp, questing fingers to latch into his bicep, his neck, as he cups both hands around Staci’s head.

 

Fingers digging hard into the damp and curling hair at the temples as he lowers his forehead to Staci’s own, mindful of the shuddering, heaving breaths, wounded, snarling animal puffs of air ghosting his eyelids as he allows them to slide closed.

Straddling Staci’s wriggling, live-wire body with his heavy thighs bracketing either side, the warm, overwhelming weight of each of them constricting against his ribs and the rest of Jacob’s frame hovering over his torso, Jacob deliberately not holding very much of his weight up himself, just enough to not crush Staci’s ribs but all the rest being left to pinion him to the floor.

 

Letting it all passively control, subdue, without any effort on his part. Using his own body to absorb all of Staci’s excess, thrumming, white-eye energy, allowing him to rage and spit and rail against his immovable mass.

 

Smoothing a heavy, wide palm across Staci’s forehead, a laugh carried on a huff of air when Staci twists his head to snap his teeth around the air where his fingers had been.

 

Laughing low and like rocks breaking, pressing harder on Staci’s head on each downstroke through sweaty, matted hair until even those small, jerky head movements stilled.

 

Jacob humming quietly, letting the rumble vibrate through his chest, out and down his limbs and through the twitching, heaving body beneath him, the shockwaves crashing gently against the exhausted vibrations still racking Staci’s body. Meeting them head-on and softly crushing them, smoothing them down and overriding them until Staci lies beneath Jacob, soaked and exhausted and with a raging, spitting fire in his eyes as he glares up at calm, burning blue ice.

 

Jacob gently releasing the hand curling around Staci’s fevered forehead, never lifting but slowly sweeping it down Staci’s cheek - teeth folded harmlessly behind trembling, cracked lips - over the rabbit pulse thundering in his neck and down the length of his body, like Staci has seen him caress the flank of one of his Judges.

Like he’s seen him do to the sleek, heaving form of a deer he has downed, one hand over the eyes and the other running slowly, admiringly down the ribcage before retrieving his knife and gently opening the throat up to the world.

 

No hand over Staci’s eyes. Just the one on his ribs, resting lightly in the gaps between the bars, fingers gently massaging that vulnerable space where Staci is sure he could sneak in at just the right angle to touch his racing, altered heart.

 

“So beautiful. Home now, Staci.”

 

A sound, wet and ugly and like a prayer for and of salvation both, bubbling from Staci’s mouth. His fingers tremble and loosen in the homes they’ve made in Jacob’s arms.

 

“Shh, I know.” The hand not toying gently by open spaces near his heart lifts to card gently through his hair again. “It’s a long journey to get there sometimes, huh Peaches? Can hurt to Become, I know that.”

 

A soft kiss, without the tang of blood or anything other than sweat and salt water, pressed to Staci’s forehead, and his fingers slip from Jacob’s arms entirely, landing graceless and trembling on his thighs.

 

“You’re Home. Don’t have to hurt anymore, don’t have to struggle. S’okay to be tired and wounded here. S’what home’s for. I’ll show you how good it can be, Staci. Family.”

 

Staci’s fingers scrabbling at Jacob’s thighs like butterflies fresh from the cocoon, struggling to shake the damp Newness off their wings and take flight.

 

Choking on a whine as he turns his face into Jacob’s hand, groaning through gritted teeth and a growl as the last of his life Before sheds and dissolves into the ground. Jacob’s hand there to gently wipe away and absorb the sweat of becoming, the mucus of the chrysalis that he has whispered into.

 

Fingers suddenly stricken and arching, dancing back down Jacob’s thighs to his own, tearing and fumbling with trembling, rising lip and torn nails at his own pockets.

 

Jacob shifting his thighs just enough to make room for Staci’s struggling, a curious humming running through his chest like a big cat stretching and rumbling in the sun. Those large hands that have destroyed so much, gripped with such a strength that no part of Staci is recognizable as weakness now, those fingers stroking stroking softly up and down his ribs.

 

A small, hot grunt of triumph as Staci’s fingers seal around the prize folded up neatly in his pocket.

 

“Have a gift for you,” warbled like dying birdsong, although Staci feels his whole body burning so hot and blinding under Jacob’s gaze and from between his bones that he is only able to think of feathers born shiny and new from out of the ashes.

 

Jacob watching him with ravenous eyes as he withdraws the torn, wet square from his pocket, cradles it for a moment before slicing his eyes up through Jacob’s chest to carve into his face, the hunger and pride in his gaze, before he shoves it roughly at his chest.

 

“Yours,” he snarls, clot-stained teeth once again bared beneath Jacob’s eyes.

 

Shoves harder, more insistent and with more torn, jagged crescents dug into skin as Jacob’s eyes alight with frozen fire, as his breath leaves him in a hot, almost enraged snort, leaning down to cover Staci’s body like he’s a raging bull, feeling that hot breath and hardness between the legs. Arching his back up into it like he’s a fucking animal, lunging up to sink his teeth into Jacob’s thick, scarred neck, just around the vein that throbs, thrilling just beneath the skin and between Staci’s incisors.

 

“You’ve done so fucking well, Staci.” Winding his fingers through Staci’s as they attempt to pull and tear the gift even as he’s giving it.

 

To love and punish all at once because Jacob will always have Everything of him now, and a part of Staci wants to give him nothing as retribution for not stopping at making him what he has become, for having the audacity to love him too.

 

Jacob sitting up, clenching his thighs hard enough around Staci’s middle that it stills his thrashing and lures his hands into trying to dig themselves into the meat of Jacob’s leg far enough to find a weak spot.

 

Leaves Jacob’s hands free to stroke reverently over the torn patch of skin in his hands, clumps of sinew still clinging to the underside like garish threads. Lifting it to his face and tilting, a jeweller examining a newly-cut diamond.

 

“You like this tattoo better when it was on him, Peaches?” Quirking his lip enough to expose one gleaming canine, freeing one hand to run it teasingly lightly over Staci’s chest.  
  
Staci arching, lifting his hips in the unhappily married hopes of gaining enough leverage to push the Nightmare off his chest, and also to gain more friction, more heat and pressure from that questing hand and hardening length.

 

“You like it better when it was warm with all that red-blooded patriotism coursing underneath it, huh Stace? Enjoy those comforting little touches while you could, staring at this piece of patriotism lying dead and buried beneath his skin?”  
  
Chortling quietly when Staci manages to yank the hand holding the patchwork present back down to his body, embed his teeth into the wrist until bone and teeth meet in a grinding, thundering union.

 

Sinking them in further, harder, and slicing at Jacob’s hands when they still try to touch, to pet and to marvel around his new, stronger shape.

 

“ _Yours._ Your gift, for your hands, you bastard. You _monster._ Not his. Could only ever fucking think about yours when he tried to make me forget they were ever on me.”

 

Spitting through blood and gristle, through tears and the knowledge that the truth would only ever bring him closer to Home, to Him, even as Jacob encourages his hips to roll, makes his own thigh solid and warm and available as Staci writhes both with and against his Purpose.

 

”You made me let you _know_ me. See me. Forced your way in and put your hands on it _all._ ” Fisting his scraped and bone-tight knuckles in Jacob’s shirt and tugging, tugging repeatedly like a seizure, forcing Jacob’s head to bend to his, to meet his bared teeth with Jacob’s glinting, ravenous smile

 

“Now see this. Put your hands on _this._ My gift to you. My welcome home present.”

     


**Author's Note:**

> Huge massive love to Emily (devils_trap) for all her unwavering acceptance of my shrieking, and all her shrieking back. This is for her because she shamelessly encouraged me when we were talking about how likely it would be that Staci and Jacob would be the 'murder present' kind.


End file.
